Child of Winter, Child of Summer
by Taaroko
Summary: The night after Odin shows him and Thor the artifacts in the Vault, Loki is visited by a familiar nightmare. He has a plan for how to overcome it, but he gets much more than he bargained for. Goes AU right after the flashback scene in the first movie. Low angst. Lots of cuteness. No slash.
1. Winter's Lament

Yeah, I'm gonna start a fourth Thor WIP. What could possibly go wrong?

* * *

Loki sat bolt upright, his heart pounding and breath coming in gasps. He spent the next few minutes with his arms around his knees, choking back sobs and shivering even though he still had his blankets around him. He hadn't had the dream in years, and he'd started to hope it was gone for good. Nothing really happened in it, and he didn't know why it was so frightening. It was always the same. He was in a vast, dark chamber. It was freezing cold, and he was alone. No matter how loudly he yelled, no one ever came.

He hated that it was back. He was a growing boy of 200. In the last decade, he'd even grown taller than Thor! He was too old for silly nightmares like that. Perhaps it had just come back this one time because of what Father had shown them in the Vault. Yes, that had to be it. Learning about the Frost Giants, seeing their prized Casket, and imagining Father fighting them on their frozen realm had simply reminded his subconscious of it. It didn't make him a coward or a baby.

...But he was alone right now in his chambers, where it was dark and the fire had burned down.

He could have stoked the flames with seidr, but instead he slid out of bed and tiptoed over to his door. He listened hard for a few seconds, then poked his head out. There weren't any servants or guards in the corridor, so he hurried as quietly as possible to the next door over and slipped inside. Thor was sprawled across his bed on his stomach, his mouth open wide. Loki made a face at the sight of the small patch of drool soaking the pillow, but prodded Thor's shoulder. "Brother, wake up!" he whispered urgently. It took several more seconds of increasingly insistent prodding before Thor's face scrunched up and he opened his eyes.

"Loki, what are you doing? I was sleeping!"

"How can you sleep at a time like this? There are Frost Giants attacking Asgard. We're the realm's only hope! Come on!"

A grin spread over Thor's face and all traces of sleepiness vanished in an instant. He gathered his crimson blanket around his shoulders like a cape and tied it off, then stood up on the mattress, fists on hips. With his hair sticking up on one side and the wrinkles of his pillowcase imprinted into his cheek, he didn't exactly look the fearsome warrior, but he believed he did, and that was good enough. "Where are they attacking? They will learn to fear the mighty Thor!"

Loki scowled at him, arms crossed.

"...And Loki, the greatest sorcerer of Asgard!" Thor added hastily. Loki grinned and uncrossed his arms. Good. Thor hadn't forgotten about the snake incident yet.

"They are trying to retrieve the Casket from the Vault so that they can turn all of Asgard to ice!" said Loki. "We must stop them."

Thor blinked and suddenly looked a bit nervous. Loki's imagination usually led the way in their adventures, particularly when they were supposed to be asleep, but he'd never taken them somewhere so out-of-bounds as the Vault.

"...A-are you certain they aren't attacking the kitchens?" said Thor. His stomach chimed in with a low rumble.

"Yes!" said Loki. "They'll get in if we don't stop them! Are you going to let Asgard fall?"

It was Thor's turn to scowl, and he jumped down from the bed. "Of course not! I will defend Asgard to the last." He grabbed a wooden practice sword off the floor where he hadn't bothered to put it away earlier and brandished it fiercely.

Pleased with his work, Loki now followed Thor out into the corridor. He'd figured it all out. If tales of the war and seeing the Casket up close had brought back the dream, then maybe he could chase it away for good if he saw it again and they made up a few tales of their own.

"How are we going to get past the Vault guards?" said Thor as they made a quick stop back in Loki's chambers so that he could retrieve a blanket cape for himself and a pair of practice daggers. (Mother had confiscated all his real ones after the snake incident and he would not get them back for several more weeks, even though Thor was already perfectly well—there wasn't even a scar!)

"I have an idea," said Loki, tying off his green blanket the same way Thor had. "But we can't do it until we're close. I don't think I can hold it very long."

They made their way down the many levels from the royal apartments to the sub-levels, the very bottom of which was the Vault. They had a couple of narrow misses with guards, but they'd done this kind of nightly sneaking about often enough to be quite good at avoiding detection. When they were just around the corner from the corridor with the pair of elaborate gilt doors, Loki grabbed Thor by his cape to stop him rushing farther ahead. "Alright, bend down. I need to climb up on your shoulders."

"What for?" said Thor, frowning.

"The only person the guards will let into the Vault without question is Father. I can make us look like him, but only if we're tall enough."

"Why do I have to be on the bottom?" said Thor crossly.

"Because you're stronger than I am," said Loki, "and I need to concentrate if the illusion is going to hold, which I can't do while walking and carrying you." He probably could have, actually, but Thor didn't need to know that.

"Al _right_ ," said Thor with a drawn-out groan. He stuck his practice sword through his belt and crouched down so that Loki could clamber up. The end result felt a bit wobbly—Thor didn't have a great deal of shoulder on which to sit, after all, but they were stable enough as long as Thor kept hold of Loki's knees.

"Good," said Loki. "Here we go." He fixed an image of Father in his mind and concentrated on it as hard as he could, then harnessed some of the tingling seidr that always flowed beneath his skin and formed it into that image. In this position, their total height was rather greater than Odin's, but a bit of extra height was easier to mask than an entire separate person off to the side. From their position, it was difficult to tell whether it had worked, but their reflection in the golden walls was just distinct enough to show them one gray-bearded man in richly embroidered robes where two boys should have been. "Start walking," said Loki. "Make sure to take confident strides just like Father. Any hesitation would seem out of character. But don't say anything, or you'll ruin it."

Thor nodded and walked forward, and in the wall next to them, the dim reflection of Odin also began walking. The two guards flanking the doors stood up straighter as they approached. After the briefest glance at them, their faces snapped to the front. Loki made the illusion give a regal nod, and the guards obligingly opened the doors for their king. Thor walked them through, and the doors closed behind them. Loki waited a few seconds before releasing his seidr, just in case, but the doors remained closed.

"Ha!" he said in triumph, hopping down from Thor's shoulders. "We did it!"

Thor beamed at him. "That was brilliant, Loki! We could go anywhere on Asgard with that trick!"

"Not _anywhere_ ," said Loki. "At least not until I work out how to imitate Father's voice as well."

"Well, now we're here," said Thor, drawing his sword again. He looked all around the Vault, free hand on his chin and brow furrowed. "We'll have to check the whole place for weak points if we are to defend it."

"Even if there were cracks in the walls, how do you expect Frost Giants to fit through them?" said Loki. "What we really must do is check for signs of magical intrusion."

Thor frowned. "Fine, you do that. _I'm_ going to check for weak points."

"Just don't touch any of the artifacts!" Loki warned. Thor stuck out his tongue at him and went stomping off, poking his practice sword into corners around the plinths where each artifact sat. Loki left him to it. He raised his hands and made them glow green-gold with his seidr. Magic of the kind he had just described to Thor was far more advanced than what he could do now, but he could at least produce a few effects to make it seem like he was doing it. And he could sense the power of several of the artifacts.

The Warlock's Eye seemed to follow him wherever he went, which was incredibly creepy. The Tuning Fork had an eerie resonance to it that made Loki hurry past it, rubbing his exposed forearms, the hairs of which were standing on end. He spent a little longer in front of the Tablet of Life and Time. Father hadn't said much about that one, but it bore the runic inscription Those Who Sit Above in Shadow. Could it really have been made by the same beings who had made the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Jotnar?

"All secure," said Thor, strutting back to Loki. "Did you find where they'll be coming through?"

Loki feigned a look of extreme effort, making his seidr glow brighter. "I don't think I can hold them! Ahhh!" He made a line of gold appear in thin air a few yards in front of them, and then it opened into a shining doorway, through which two illusory Frost Giants appeared. They weren't very big—only a couple heads taller than Father—, and he would have liked to be able to conjure more, but this was already straining his limits, and he needed to keep enough power reserved to get them back out of the Vault.

"For Asgard!" Thor yelled gleefully, swinging his wooden sword at the nearest illusion. The illusions were silent, didn't have very convincing movements, and Loki had no idea how Frost Giants would actually do battle, but from the way Thor attacked them, they might as well have been the real thing. "Brother, you must secure the Casket!" he said. "I'll hold them off!"

Loki did as instructed, a wide grin on his face. He felt light as air. This had definitely been a good idea. What did he have to fear from stories of Jotunheim and a silly old nightmare? He turned to face the Casket. The relic of a defeated race of monsters, proof of Asgard's superiority. Loki's brow furrowed as he gazed at the swirling blue lights within the Casket. It looked like there was a blizzard trapped inside it. He took a step closer, then another. It was like...it was like it was calling out to him.

"Loki, what are you doing?" said Thor. Loki's concentration was all for the Casket now, so the illusions must have dissipated.

"Can't you hear it?" Loki whispered, only a few feet away from it now. He could hear something like music coming from the Casket. It sounded colder than his dream, but somehow it was still beautiful. Like a winter wind shaped into a melody.

"Hear what?" said Thor.

Loki rolled his eyes. Of course Thor couldn't hear it. He might have incredibly powerful seidr of his own, but he'd never been able to use it for anything but lightning and thunder, and he had very little control over it. It was probably partly due to his impatience for any aspect of their education that didn't involve weapons, but even Mother said it would be near impossible to tame that wild storm enough to wield it for other purposes.

"The Casket is singing," said Loki. "It sounds so melancholy."

"Melancholy over the beating the Jotnar took from Father's army," Thor snickered. "Hey, stop that! We're not allowed to touch the relics. You said so yourself! Father will find out we were down here!"

Loki was barely listening to him. His hand had drifted up towards the Casket. All he could think was that maybe if he got close enough, he'd be able to understand that strange song. He ignored Thor, and gripped the handles.

X

"Lo _ki_!" Thor whined, glancing back at the stairs. The doors were still closed, and there was no sound of approaching footsteps, but that could change any moment. Despite his initial misgivings, it had been quite thrilling to get past the guards and sneak into the Vault, but they were certain to get caught if they stayed much longer. Who knew how long Father would have them mucking out the stables and barred from their favorite places and activities for this?

When he turned back around, Loki was still holding onto the Casket, but something was wrong. Thor shivered and tugged his blanket cape around his arms. The Vault was getting colder. The light from the Casket was getting stronger too—Loki was completely bathed in blue light. In a few more seconds, Thor could see his own breath misting in the air. "Loki, let go of that thing! It's turning this place into an ice box!"

Loki still didn't move, and Thor didn't know whether to be scared or angry. Either Loki was in trouble or he was playing a trick on him. Whichever it was, they'd been here far too long, and Loki could stab him as much as he liked, but that wouldn't stop him from carrying him all the way back to the royal apartments if he had to. He ran over and made a grab for Loki's bare forearm, intending to do just that. He had a split-second to notice that what he'd thought was blue light wasn't doing anything to his own skin before he made contact, and then he was recoiling with a yelp of pain. The palm of his hand had turned black, and it felt like it was on fire. Tears welled in his eyes, which he turned reproachfully on his brother. The brief physical contact finally seemed to have distracted him from the Casket, for he released it and turned to face Thor.

Thor yelled and leapt back, pointing wildly at Loki's face with his uninjured hand. Except for the part that he was still the size of an Aesir child and was wearing his same clothes, his brother looked exactly like a Frost Giant. "Stop that right now, Loki! I'm done playing this game! We never should've come down here!"

"What are you talking about?" said Loki. It was bizarre to see that annoyed scowl he knew so well distorted by the lined, blue skin and the fearsome scarlet eyes. "I'm not doing anything."

"What do you call that?" said Thor, pointing even more forcefully. "And this?" He held up his injured hand. "You _burned_ me! Is that what you're going to do whenever Mother confiscates your daggers now? Because if it is, I'm going to figure out how to zap you with lightning the next time you try it, and then you'll be sorry!"

"I—what?" said Loki. He stared at Thor's blackened palm in bewilderment, then raised his own hands. His eyes went wide. "What is this?"

"Don't pretend you're not doing it on purpose!" said Thor. His hand still hurt very badly—much worse than last month's stab wound, and he was struggling to hold back more tears. Warriors weren't supposed to cry, but it _hurt!_

"But I'm not!" said Loki, and he actually sounded rather panicked as he felt the lines on his face. "Is it—is it all over me?"

"Yes," said Thor, his anger slipping a little in the face of Loki's distress. "Why'd you have to touch the Casket? Now it's cursed you to look like a Frost Giant!"

"You touch it, then!" said Loki. "See if the same thing happens to you."

"I'm not doing that!" Thor protested. "Why would I get myself cursed on purpose?"

Loki seemed to realize that it was a stupid idea even as Thor asked this question. "I didn't mean to hurt you," he said. "I promise. I don't even know how it happened."

"It was when I touched your arm," said Thor, now clenching his other fist in an effort not to show signs of pain. It wasn't just that he wanted to be tough like a Valkyrie or one of the Einherjar now; if Loki really hadn't done it on purpose, then he didn't want to make him feel worse.

"I'm sorry," said Loki, twisting his blue hands together.

"Don't worry about me," said Thor, stepping closer. The air around them was still rather chilly, but it had warmed up considerably in the moments since Loki had released the Casket. What are we going to do about you? How do you break a Frost Giant curse?"

"I don't know," said Loki.

"Is it hurting you at all?"

"No." Loki spread his arms and looked down at himself. "It feels different, but not bad." He squinted his eyelids as though he was standing in direct sunlight. "Everything looks a lot brighter, though."

"Well maybe it'll go away on its own," said Thor hopefully. "Can you do that illusion of Father again so we can get out of here?"

"Not if I can't touch you without giving you frostbite," said Loki, biting his lip.

"We've got these blankets," said Thor, tugging at a corner of his own. "Maybe they'll be enough of a barrier to get us past that corridor."

"As long as you're sure you want to try it," said Loki.

They were able to manage it without too much difficulty. Thor re-tied his own blanket so that it covered his head as well as his back, and then put Loki's blanket on over his front. It probably looked very stupid, but when Loki climbed back up onto his shoulders, none of the bare skin of his arms or legs came in direct contact with Thor. Even though it only took a few seconds for the cold to seep through, it wasn't enough to be painful. Loki cast the illusion over them again and Thor pushed the door open.

Half an hour later, they were slipping back into Loki's room, which was lit only by the wide stripe of moonlight shining in through the window. They both relaxed a little upon getting inside. Even if Mother and Father found out what they'd done, they would at least have until morning before they had to face the consequences of their actions.

Loki walked to the standing mirror next to his bath chamber. "I look like a monster," he said in a small voice.

Thor frowned, joining his brother before the mirror. Loki seemed much more upset now than he had been so far. Maybe he'd been hoping he would be back to normal by the time they got back. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been a moment to drag Loki into a crushing hug, but that wasn't an option right now, so instead, he hoisted a jovial grin onto his face and thumped Loki on the back. "Don't be daft, Loki! No monster is this small and skinny."

"I'm not the one who's daft," Loki grumbled. "Thor...what if the curse doesn't go away on its own? What if it gets worse? Or...or what if someone else sees me like this and they don't recognize me? What if they throw me in the dungeon or attack me?"

None of those possibilities had occurred to Thor. The idea that he might be stuck looking like this was a horrible one. "If it's not gone in the morning, we'll tell Mother," he said. "She'll know what to do."

Loki nodded. He was fidgeting with his hands again. "Will you—will you stay here tonight?"

Thor would have preferred to go back to his own chambers where he could cradle his burned hand and groan without an audience, but this was the first time in what must have been years that Loki had admitted to being frightened—he'd grown much too keen to prove that he wasn't just the 'baby' brother for that, particularly since passing Thor up in height—and it went directly against Thor's instincts to abandon him when he was specifically asking for his help.

"Please?" Loki added. His bottom lip, still blue like the rest of him, was quivering, and his red eyes were bright with tears that threatened to spill out.

"Oh, alright," said Thor.

Loki smiled, looking enormously relieved. Thor smiled back, and they climbed into the bed and pulled the covers up to their chests. It had only been a few decades since they'd stopped sneaking into each other's rooms and sharing a bed, but Thor well remembered waking up to the feeling of small, ice-cold feet pressed against his bare calf under the blankets. "Make sure you keep your freezing toes to your side of the bed."

Loki giggled, which made Thor feel a little less worried. If he could still laugh, then the curse couldn't be so bad, could it? Maybe it really would go away on its own. Maybe his hand would heal too, and then Mother and Father would never have to find out about their little misadventure in the Vault.

A few minutes passed in silence.

"Loki?"

"What?"

"If you still look like this in the morning, and anyone tries to attack you, they'll have to go through me."

There was a soft rustling sound, and then a blanket-covered hand landed on Thor's and squeezed. Thor squeezed back.

* * *

So apparently two fics where Loki finds out his origins under better circumstances aren't enough for my muse. I've wanted to write one set when Thor and Loki were kids for a while, but I couldn't think of a good plot catalyst. I'm of the school of AUs where you can't change the choices the characters make (because that makes them into different characters), you only change some seemingly insignificant detail about the circumstances and let things snowball from there. But then the solution hit me: just give Loki a nightmare he (probably) didn't have in canon! I really like the idea that Loki had a recurring nightmare that he didn't realize was actually a memory of the time he spent abandoned in that temple before Odin found him. That period seems to have informed a great deal about his character.

I cannot tell you how delighted I was to have an opportunity to write the Two Kids in a Trench Coat trope. Even if the trench coat was made of magic and the ruse actually succeeded. CUTIES!

So my idea about Loki and the Casket of Ancient Winters is that he's more susceptible to its influence as a child, which is why he can hear its music and is so mesmerized by it, and also why its effects on his appearance are lasting longer.

I love, love, love writing Thor and Loki as kids. They still squabble plenty and act like idiots as adults, but it's extra adorable when they're little. Also, according to me, Aesir (and Jotnar) take a few centuries to grow to adulthood. Toddlerhood only lasts a few years, and then it starts stretching out dramatically from there. It would just be so sad if they lived for 5000 years and only got to be kids for 12 of them. Besides, they act too much like dumb 20-somethings for me to believe they've already lived many centuries as adults.

This probably will have at least one more chapter, but I don't think it's going to end up being huge.

Please let me know what you thought! Feedback is life!


	2. Goddess of Motherhood

When Loki awoke, he found himself horribly uncomfortable in the sweltering heat of his chambers, and the morning sunlight was so blinding that he clapped his hands over his eyes. His skin was _still_ blue, and he began to cry in miserable frustration. He tried, for about the dozenth time, to shapeshift back into his true form, but nothing happened.

Not far away on the bed, there came a sound somewhere between a whimper and a groan. He cupped his hands around his eyes and opened them a fraction. The light didn't hurt so much, and he was able to see Thor lying there. His skin was flushed and his blond hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat. There was also a greenish tinge around the black frostbite on his hand. "Thor?" said Loki, squinting and carefully touching Thor's shoulder through his tunic. "Thor, wake up." Thor moaned again, and his eyes moved beneath their lids, but no matter how loudly Loki sobbed his name or how hard he shook his shoulder, Thor didn't wake.

X

It wasn't an altogether uncommon occurrence for the boys not to arrive in the royal breakfast room on time. Odin was already poring over a stack of parchment—the reports from Council members, requests from Aesir nobles and rulers of other realms, and lists of supplicants and the concerns they would be bringing before the throne that day—so he barely noticed the food on his own plate, or that Hugin and Munin were taking advantage of this and stealing beakfuls of it. He hadn't noticed the absence of his sons either.

Frigga, however, frowned at the arched doorway they should be coming through. She sent a projection of herself to Thor's chambers first. They were empty, and the red blanket was missing from the bed. Suspicions growing, she vanished and reappeared in Loki's chambers. There was no sign of the room's occupant, but Thor was lying on the bed in restless sleep. One glance was enough to tell Frigga that he was very ill, and the source of that illness was a black burn on his right palm. Immediately, she sent her projection several levels down to the healing room.

"Eir!" she called.

"My queen?" said the woman who had overseen the treatment of injuries and illness in the palace for centuries.

"Prince Thor needs you. You will find him in Prince Loki's chambers."

"What happened?" To Eir's credit, no hint of exasperation colored her tone, even though she had tended to both princes for accidental injuries more than enough times to have lost all patience with them.

"It appears that sometime in the night, he suffered severe frostbite to his hand. It has become infected, and he has a fever and will not wake."

Eir looked horrified. "But that could only have happened if he touched a—" She broke off, her eyes widening. "Does that mean…?"

"I fear it does. But let me worry about that. I will leave Thor to your excellent care."

"Yes, your majesty."

Frigga's projection did not remain long enough for her to see Eir hurry from the room. Her consciousness returned to her physical body, and she glanced at her husband. He was still reading, fork poised vaguely a few inches from his mouth. Hugin had already stolen the piece of sausage off it.

"Anything particularly noteworthy on your schedule for today, my dear?" she asked.

"What?" said Odin. He looked at her, then back at the parchment. "Oh, not especially. A few construction proposals, requests for a team of healers to be sent to a Vanir city suffering from a plague, and the delegates from Nidavellir aren't happy with the accommodations we've prepared from them, even though they're the same ones they've stayed in for every visit for the last five hundred years, which usually means they're trying to put me off-balance before making an outrageous request." He gave her a weary smile. "I hope your day will be more pleasant than mine."

"I think I will be spending the morning with our sons, but after I send them to Bragi and Vor for their lessons, I can take those supplicants if you would like."

"Thank you," he said. It came out a sigh of relief, and he passed her several of the sheets of parchment. "Give the boys my love. If I can get everything sorted out with the dwarves, I might actually be able to see them at supper."

"If you cannot, they will understand. Taking them to the Vault yesterday was a wonderful idea. I'm sure they will be talking of nothing else for weeks."

"What if we were to leave Asgard to Tyr and the Council for a fortnight or so and take the boys to Vanaheim?"

Frigga's smile widened. "You don't think the Council will scheme behind your back in your absence?"

"Of course they will, but I flatter myself I can still best them. It's been far too long since I made time to see how Thor is coming with his training, and Loki with his seidr. And I had to find out by a stray comment from Bragi that Loki has already mastered written Allspeak." He flapped a hand to shoo Munin away from his plate and took a moody bite of egg.

"You know very well how difficult it is to be both a good king and a good father," said Frigga. "Your people and your sons love you, and so does your queen." She gave him a kiss before leaving the room. Then she headed straight for Loki's chambers.

Thor was gone; he would be in the Healing Room by now. There was still no sign of Loki. She waved a hand, causing the heavy curtains to fall closed over the windows, leaving the room in semidarkness. Then she approached the northeast corner and crouched down. She stretched out with her seidr and unraveled the somewhat sloppily constructed cloaking spell, revealing her second son. His arms were wrapped tightly around his knees, and he was sniffling. As she had suspected from Thor's frostbitten hand, Loki had reverted to his Jotun form.

"Loki, will you look at me?"

He turned tear-filled crimson eyes to face her. "I didn't mean to," he said. "He grabbed my arm, and it just happened. And then when I woke up, it was worse."

Frigga's heart broke for him, and she reached out to wrap her arms around him, but he recoiled. "No!" he cried. "I'll burn you too!"

She drew back, and she had to fight to keep her voice even. "It's alright, my love," she said. "It's just a defense mechanism. Your skin will only burn me if you believe I'm a threat. Do you believe that?"

"No," he whispered. "But I didn't think Thor was a threat either, and now he's hurt and ill."

"Hmm. Did he catch you by surprise when he touched you?"

Loki nodded.

"Well, you're not surprised now, and you don't believe I'm a threat. You will not hurt me. I promise." She smiled at him and held out a hand. He stared at it uncertainly, then slowly reached out. He touched the center of her palm with his fingertip for the briefest moment before whipping it back. She showed him her undamaged skin. "See? It's perfectly safe." She reached up to brush away some of the tears on his cold cheeks. More joined them, and after a few seconds, he flung himself into her arms. She held him tightly as he cried into her shoulder, and they sat this way for several minutes.

"Is Thor going to be alright?" he asked eventually, voice choked with fear. "I watched Eir take him away."

"Of course he will. Eir is well practiced at treating frostbite. He will be his hale and happy self in no time, but you should have come straight to us when it happened. Such wounds do not go away on their own."

"I didn't mean to hurt him. I swear I didn't."

"I know, Loki." On the occasions when he _did_ deliberately injure Thor, he became evasive and stubborn, and it could be quite a task to coax a suitable amount of remorse out of him. When it was an accident, he was distraught. "Will you please tell me what happened?"

He pulled back and looked up at her with those wide, shockingly red eyes. She smoothed his hair, which was somewhat rumpled from sleep. "I'll tell you, but we didn't go just for fun. It was because I had the nightmare again," he said. Frigga's heart twisted. She had hoped the troubled nights of his early decades were behind him now, but apparently not.

"Where did you go?"

"I thought the nightmare might have returned because Father showed us the Casket of Ancient Winters and told us of the war, so I wondered if I could stop myself having it again if I went back."

"So you persuaded Thor to return to the Vault with you in the middle of the night?"

Loki dropped his gaze from hers, his cheeks darkening to an almost violet color. "Yes, Mother."

Frigga hadn't known that Jotnar could blush. How precious. She resisted the urge to give one of those cheeks a pinch and forced her expression to remain gently stern. "What happened in there?" she asked.

"I made some illusions for us to fight, like we were fending off an invasion of Frost Giants. But then I looked at the Casket. I could feel its magic. It was singing to me."

"Which is why you touched it?"

He nodded.

She raised her eyebrows at him. "Despite what I've taught you about treating magical artifacts with caution and respect?"

He looked chagrined. "Do you know how to break the curse it put on me?" he asked.

She pursed her lips. Odin and his secrets. She knew how many scars his daughter had left on his heart. In many ways, they had made him a wiser king than he once was, but sometimes what he called wisdom was merely an attempt to protect himself from more pain. Loki never would have been so frightened and confused if they had just been honest with him from the start. Well, Frigga wasn't about to let her husband smooth this over with more lies. However, Loki would probably react better to the truth if he wasn't in this unfamiliar skin when he heard it. "What have you already tried?"

"I tried changing back like I do when I shapeshift, but nothing happened."

"Have you tried shapeshifting into something else first?" she suggested.

"Oh," said Loki, brightening. "I didn't think of that."

"Go on," said Frigga, smiling encouragingly. When he had first taken his Aesir form, he had done it by instinctively drawing on the powerful seidr of the person holding him. He was unlikely to be able to duplicate the same results after so many years of formal magical training, especially without skin contact and with no idea that he was changing _out_ of his true form, not the other way around. This roundabout approach would be much easier for him until he understood more.

Loki's brow furrowed and his lip jutted out as he concentrated. Then the green-gold of his seidr shone from his skin, and in seconds, he became a small green snake coiled around her forearm. She tickled him affectionately under his chin, and he flicked his forked tongue out at her in an exasperated sort of way. The light shone from him again, and her son reappeared, back in his Aesir form.

"It worked!" he cried in delight, looking at his pink hands. "Thank you, Mother!" He hugged her again and kissed her on the cheek.

"Of course," she said, kissing him back.

"May I go to Thor now?"

"Not just yet. There is something I need to discuss with you. I believe you are old enough to know."

Loki looked horrified. "Mother, I already know where babies come from!"

Frigga let out a burst of laughter. "No, no, darling, that is not the discussion I had in mind. Come." She got gracefully to her feet and held out a hand. He took it and allowed her to lead him out of the room.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

"Somewhere very special to me." She glanced at him and saw him shooting furtive looks in every direction, plainly attempting to guess their destination.

"The nursery?" he said, sounding disappointed when they turned down the final corridor. And indeed, the room she was leading him to was the one he had shared with Thor for most of his first century. She pushed the door open and they stepped inside. The large room had a feeling of disuse now, as it had been unoccupied for quite some time. "What's so special about the nursery?"

Frigga waved her free hand to bring up the lights to about a medium glow, led him to a window with a wide, cushioned bench underneath it, and sat next to him, before taking his other hand in hers. "This is the room where I first held you in my arms."

"What do you want to discuss with me?" he said, a hint of an embarrassed scowl on his face, color rising in his pale cheeks.

"Perhaps discussion is the wrong word. It's more of a story."

Loki sat up straighter, intrigued, and Frigga began her tale.

"Once, there were a king and queen who ruled over a golden land, and all their subjects were happy and prosperous. They lived in peace for many years, and the realms under their protection thrived. But then the shadow of war darkened the horizon, for there was another king, a cruel giant who ruled over a world of ice and darkness. He coveted what the first king had, and so he tried to take one of those protected realms. If he had succeeded, the people, plants, and animals there would all have perished under the ice that only his own people could survive."

"Mother, this is the same story Father told us in the Vault yesterday," said Loki, rolling his eyes.

"Hush," said Frigga, amused. "Just because you have heard a story once does not mean there is nothing more you can gain from it." He grimaced and nodded. She continued. "The first king and his armies went to war. It was a difficult time. Many warriors were sent to Valhalla, leaving their families behind. However, the golden land still had cause to rejoice, for the queen had given the king his first son. The queen was very happy, but as she watched her child learn to walk and talk, the only little one in a palace full of grown men and women, she knew that her family was not complete. She longed for another child to love."

Loki's cheeks were bright red again and he squirmed a little in his seat.

"Meanwhile, on the world of ice, another queen was with child. She already had two sons, and she loved them as much as the first queen loved her little boy."

Loki made a sound of disbelief, and Frigga looked at him sharply.

"Yes, Loki, she did. Queen Farbauti loved her children with all her heart, and she was good to her people. She never wanted war."

"She didn't?"

"No."

"Did you meet her?" said Loki, his eyes wide.

Frigga smiled, but it was pained. "I did. Only once. It was before the war, when your father and I went to attempt negotiations with Laufey. She was fierce and brave, and had an incredible inner strength. I would have liked to have known her better."

"But she was a Jotun," said Loki.

"And what do you think that means?"

He frowned. "The Einherjar and the shieldmaidens all talk of the savage monsters they faced in the war..."

"The Einherjar and the shieldmaidens saw little of the Jotnar apart from the soldiers they met in battle. They could not tell you of their families, their children, their markets, their craftsmen, their breathtaking music and poetry."

"But...but they don't even wear proper clothes!" Loki protested.

"They wear what is appropriate for their needs. They do not require protection from the cold, and the more of their skin they cover, the less they are able to feel Jotunheim and draw strength from it."

"What, like seidr?"

"Not precisely. Some Jotnar are blessed with seidr, just like all the long-lived races. But even the Frost Giants without a hint of seidr in them are connected to the power of Jotunheim itself. The power of winter."

A small furrow appeared between Loki's eyebrows. He had likely realized how similar this description was to his own experience in the Vault and was wondering what it meant. "Do you have other questions, or may I continue the story?"

He shook his head and adjusted his seat. "Please continue, Mother."

"The people of Jotunheim were eager to welcome another royal child. But Farbauti gave birth far too early. The child was healthy, but she was afraid for him, for he was very small—only the size of an Aesir babe."

"Why was she afraid?" asked Loki, his voice barely above a whisper. He had clearly become more invested in the story now, after what she had told him about the Jotnar, and Frigga was glad.

"She was afraid because her husband the king had made a cruel decree centuries before, about babies born so small. He believed they were a threat to the strength of Jotunheim."

Loki wrinkled his nose. "How could a baby be a threat to anything, no matter its size?"

"How, indeed," Frigga agreed. "Laufey has never been very wise. According to his decree, any parents who produced an undersized child were barred from having other children, and so were any existing children already in the family." She opted not to tell him that this was accomplished by forced sterilization. "The babies themselves were taken away to die. Laufey tried to make it sound better by calling it 'giving them back to the gods.' He rewrote Jotunheim's religious texts to legitimize the practice."

Loki looked appalled. "And Farbauti was afraid Laufey would do the same thing to their own baby?"

Frigga nodded. "She knew her husband better than anyone. He had effectively lost the war against Asgard already. They had been beaten back from Midgard, and the Einherjar were at the gates of Utgard, their capital city. After all his lies about how these children were cursed and a threat to the Jotnar's way of life, for Laufey's own child to be born so small on the eve of defeat in the war…"

"It would have looked like he had been judged unfit to rule by their gods," said Loki.

"Yes," said Frigga. "And perhaps he had, for his hypocrisy and greed. Farbauti knew that the child's life would be forfeit the instant Laufey learned of him. So she planned to do what many Jotnar mothers whose children are born small have done: smuggle him to another realm where he could be safe. On Alfheim, there are several communities with more Jotnar than Alfar, and there are even a few living on Vanaheim. Laufey knows nothing of them. They are kept very secret, in order to protect them from him."

"And the Alfar and the Vanir help keep the secret?" said Loki.

"Of course. These Jotnar are their friends, their neighbors. They have grown up alongside their own children. Some have even married them."

Loki looked amazed by the very idea. "So where did the baby go? Is he on Alfheim or Vanaheim? Do the people there know he is a prince of Jotunheim?"

"He is not on Alfheim or Vanaheim," said Frigga. "Laufey discovered Farbauti before she could carry out her plan."

Loki gasped, his eyes wide and fearful.

"Farbauti was right to fear how he would react. He took the baby from her and brought him in secret very close to where the battle was taking place. He thought an Aesir wouldn't hesitate to slay a Jotun, even an infant, and then no one would ever know. Farbauti was still weak from childbirth, so she couldn't fight him, and not long after her son was ripped from her arms, her grief claimed her life." This was not true, but though Frigga felt Loki was more than old enough to know of his origins, she would certainly not burden him with the knowledge that his mother had been murdered by his father hours after his birth until he was much, much older. If ever. As it was, Loki's eyes were already bright with tears. It brought up a lump in Frigga's throat. She hoped Farbauti could see him. "Laufey told his people the child died with her. They were devastated. So were the older princes."

"But Laufey was lying, wasn't he?" said Loki. "No one from Asgard would murder a baby. Father would never allow it."

"You're right; he would not," said Frigga. Of course, it had not always been so, but Asgard had been a very different place, and Odin a very different king, since the days of the Aesir-Vanir war. "But that nearly didn't matter. The newborn prince of Jotunheim spent two days lying alone inside an abandoned temple near the wall of Utgard, where his cries went unanswered. If the battle had gone on any longer, he might have starved to death." She couldn't help tightening her grip on Loki's hands as she said this. She wondered if he had recognized his old nightmare in what she had just described. "But the Norns had other plans for him. The war won at last, Odin went into the temple for a moment of respite. Instead, he found the baby lying on the altar inside, crying. Small wonder the sight of him didn't make poor thing cry harder, for he had just lost his eye and the wound hadn't even been cleaned. However, the little prince was not so easily frightened. He quieted when his father's mortal enemy picked him up, and he smiled. He reached out with his seidr towards this strange new person, then turned his own skin from blue to pink, perfectly imitating an Aesir form."

She thought Loki must be very close to realizing where she was going with this, because he didn't say anything, and his face had gone very pale. "I don't think anything had ever surprised Odin more. The little prince had quite impressed him with that display. He knew about Laufey's decree against allowing such small children to live, which meant it was unlikely any of his own kind would be coming back for him. The only thing to do was to bring him home to Asgard.

"And so it was that the deepest wish of the queen of the golden land was granted the same day the war was won. The king returned with his army, and all the people celebrated." Frigga took a deep breath, then squeezed Loki's hands and continued. "I was sitting on this very bench with Thor, awaiting Odin's return. Thor was impatient to see his Pabbi again, for it had been many months since we had last been able to meet. Odin arrived at last, but he wasn't alone. He was carrying a bundle from Jotunheim in his arms. He wasn't sure how I would react, but I took one look at the little prince and knew I would never be able to let him go. My heart had recognized him as the piece that had been missing from our family. Odin admitted that he was relieved to hear me say so, because the idea of passing the child off to be raised by someone else had pained him."

"So," said Loki, his voice small and tremulous, his eyes on their joined hands, "that is how the third prince of Jotunheim became Loki Odinson, the second prince of Asgard."

"Yes," said Frigga. She gathered him up in her arms.

He let her do it, though his limbs remained limp and unmoving. "How did you know all that about Laufey and Farbauti?" he asked. "Did Heimdall tell you?"

"He did. I made a promise to Farbauti that day, that I would give her son all the love she did not survive to give him." She pulled back so she could press a kiss to his forehead and look him in the eyes. There was a distant, almost vacant look in them, which was more worrying than tears would have been. It didn't stop her from speaking her heart. "Never has any promise been easier to keep."

* * *

I wonder how many different versions of Loki finding out his origins I'm going to end up writing. "Interventionism" has Odin making less of a mess of it than he did in canon, and here we've got Frigga doing it, and it'll definitely happen at some point in "If I Could Start Again."

I love Frigga so much. How well do you guys think she did with this conversation?

I kept the backstory for what went down with Laufey and Farbauti mostly the same as in "Interventionism," although Laufey's policies about runts is a bit worse in this fic.

There will probably be at least one more chapter, because obviously the rest of the family needs to get involved and Loki needs to react to what he just learned.


	3. Thorbrodir

Loki sat in Frigga's arms for a long time, clinging to her like he often had as a much younger child, trying to comprehend all that she had just told him. He did not cry—what he had learned was too much of a shock for that. Instead, he felt numb, and he kept going over the new information in an effort to make sense of it.

He was not Aesir, but Jotun.

Not only was he Jotun, but a prince of Jotunheim.

The Casket had not cursed him, then. It had only restored his true form.

Frigga and Odin were not his parents by birth.

Farbauti, his mother, had died from the grief of being separated from him.

Laufey, his father, had tried to throw him away.

He understood his nightmare now. It wasn't a nightmare, and never had been. It was his first memory, or what was left of it. But someone _had_ answered his cries in the end. Someone had rescued him, given him a safe home, and raised him as a brother to his own son. He was alive because of Odin, just not in the way he had once thought.

"Is this why Father loves Thor better than me?" he asked, voice dull. He still felt oddly detached. "Because I'm not really his son?"

Frigga's warm hand cupped his cheek, gently coaxing him to meet her gaze. "Loki, you _are_ his son, in every way that matters, and he loves you just as well as Thor."

"He spends more time with Thor," Loki mumbled. A sharp pain had started up in his throat. He didn't want to cry again.

"Does he?" said Frigga.

Loki grimaced. "I don't know. It feels like it."

"Hmm," said Frigga. "Has it occurred to you that it may not be a question of love?"

"What would it be a question of if not that?" said Loki, perplexed.

"Consider this: you and Odin are very much alike in temperament. You are both studious and strategic, you think carefully before you speak, and even though you feel deeply, you keep those emotions buried just as deeply, where those who love you struggle to see them." She tapped a finger over his heart, then gave him another kiss on the forehead. "I believe you are both naturally drawn to people who are more open, affectionate, and outgoing, such as myself and Thor. We, in turn, are more drawn to people like you."

Loki frowned. "So it is more difficult for Father and me to be close because we are similar?" he asked, feeling rather indignant.

"Two reserved people will always have a harder time getting to know each other than two open people or even one open person and one reserved person. Consequently, even if your father spends as much time with you as he does with Thor, it may not produce equal results. But that is no reason not to try. The more difficult something is, the greater the rewards will be for working at it."

They fell silent for a moment. Loki's thoughts and feelings were still awhirl, but eventually, something else solidified enough for him to address it. "Why did you wait until now to tell me?" he asked.

"We were afraid of the danger you would be in if anyone knew, and we did not want you to have to grow up with that shadow hanging over you. As you already realized, Laufey's authority relies on his people believing that he never fathered an undersized child. Odin worked powerful magic over Asgard so that the story of our second son would not be questioned by any. As long as Laufey believes you are Odin's blood, you will not be a particular target for him."

He shivered at the thought that Laufey would still want him dead if he found out he had survived. "That's not the only reason, is it?"

"No," said Frigga, brow furrowing and mouth twisting with sorrow. "The war is too fresh on our people's minds. Many of them would have difficulty accepting a Jotun prince as the heir presumptive to the throne of Asgard. But that is a failing on _their_ part, not yours. No child should have to bear the burden of the previous generation's prejudice. You have done nothing to earn it, and it has nothing to do with who you are."

He frowned. "But who I am is Jotun."

"That is _what_ you are, though only part of it, for it is possible to be many things. You are a healthy, handsome, growing Jotun boy, the beloved third child of Farbauti, and you are also the second prince of Asgard, son of Odin, son of Frigga, and brother of Thor. As to _who_ you are—well, that is for you to decide."

"Then…" He hesitated, loath to voice what he had feared most since looking at his blue hands and realizing what the Casket had done to him. But she was looking at him with so much love and warmth that it came spilling out before he could stop it. "Then I don't have to be a monster?"

She looked as though the word had caused her pain. She found his hands and squeezed them. "Will you tell me what you felt like while you were in your Jotun form?"

He swallowed and looked away from her. "Everything was so bright. I could see in the dark, but even dim lights were uncomfortable to look at directly. And it was so hot." He thought hard, trying to recall any other differences. Oddly, there didn't seem to be any. When he transformed into animals, their instincts always tugged at his mind, sometimes making it difficult to focus on his original purpose for transforming, but nothing like that had happened while he was in Jotun form.

He glanced back up at his mother. She smiled at him, as if she could tell what he was thinking. "Does that sound monstrous to you?"

"...No," he admitted after a few seconds.

"You are not a monster, Loki, and I hope that you will never think of yourself as one, no matter what form you are in. That is why I told you of Jotunheim and Farbauti. I wanted you to understand that there is nothing wrong with coming from Jotunheim."

"Thor will not think so if he finds out," he said quietly. It was like a weight had settled on his chest. "When Father took us to the vault, Thor said he would hunt all the Jotnar down and slay them. He will hate me."

"If that were true, I would not have found him sleeping in your chambers while you were still in Jotun form," said Frigga. "You give your brother too little credit. He loves you, and he will have to learn that war is rarely so simple as heroes versus monsters."

Loki remembered what Thor had said to him before they fell asleep, and the weight on his chest lifted somewhat, but he was still afraid. It was one thing for Thor to swear to defend him when he believed he'd merely been cursed by the Casket and that he was his brother by blood. How would he react when he learned that his so-called brother was really a Frost Giant in disguise? "Do you _have_ to tell him?" he asked.

"Yes," said Frigga.

"Why?"

"Because it is not fair to either of you for him to be kept out of the secret now. If he remains in the dark, it will be a rift between you, stopping you from trusting each other. But you may decide who tells him. I could do it, your father could, we could approach him together, or you could tell him yourself. I will give you the rest of the day to make your decision."

X

Loki didn't need the rest of the day, however. Without really planning to, he found himself walking into the Healing Room barely an hour after Frigga had left him in his chambers to wash and dress for the day.

"Good morning, Prince Loki," said Eir, looking up from a parchment scroll to acknowledge him.

"Good morning, Lady Eir," said Loki. He stood as tall as he could and tried to give off that same commanding air Father always did. "I have come to see Prince Thor, and we are not to be disturbed."

Eir's mouth twitched. "Of course, my prince." She stood and showed him to the dormitory. "Not a soul shall pass this threshold while I draw breath," she vowed. He nodded and walked inside, and she closed and locked the door behind him.

Thor was sitting up in bed, and just as Mother had promised, he looked well on his way to a full recovery. His face lit up at the sight of Loki, which gave him a pang. Perhaps this would be the last time Loki got that reaction from him.

"Loki! You aren't blue anymore! Did you break the curse, then? Will you help me persuade Eir that I am well enough to leave?"

Loki hopped up onto the end of Thor's cot and sat cross-legged on top of the blankets. "You know no one can persuade Eir to release a patient earlier than she has decided to release them."

Thor let out a long groan. "But I'm well! Look!" He showed Loki his previously frostbitten hand. The skin there was a bit redder than usual, but it certainly wasn't burned black anymore, and all traces of infection were gone. "We were going to do sword training with the Einherjar today after lessons. I don't want to miss it."

Loki shrugged. He picked at the white blanket and avoided looking at Thor.

"So tell me about the curse," said Thor. "How did you break it?"

Loki swallowed. "It wasn't a curse."

"What do you mean?" said Thor in unconcerned disbelief.

"Mother found me. She helped me change back, and then she told me the truth."

"The truth about what?"

"Do you remember when I was born?" Loki looked up and saw Thor frowning.

"I...don't think so," he said. "But I was only twenty. No one remembers anything from their first few decades, do they? I just remember Mother telling me I was a big brother, and that meant always looking out for you and protecting you." He grinned at Loki, obviously feeling satisfied that he had lived up to that responsibility so far.

Loki felt a lump in his throat and tears prickling again. He would cast a glamour to hide them if he had to. "What would you do if you found out we weren't really brothers at all?" he asked.

Thor's face scrunched up in confusion. "What are you talking about, Loki? Of course we're brothers."

"We're not," said Loki, his voice barely above a whisper. He waved a hand so that the curtains would drop over all the windows, then shapeshifted back to his true form. The light that remained was suddenly almost painfully bright, and the air felt suffocatingly warm. "This is what I really look like, Thor. Touching the Casket only brought it to the surface."

Thor looked like he'd been clubbed over the head, but after a few seconds, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "This is a trick," he said flatly.

"It is not!" said Loki.

"Is so!" said Thor, pointing at him. "If you were really from Jotunheim, you'd be twice as tall as me, but you're barely an inch taller, and you won't be for long."

"Father found me on Jotunheim at the end of the war and brought me here. Mother said Jotnar are sometimes born small, but Laufey hates small babies and he passed a law against keeping them. If their parents can't smuggle them to Alfheim or Vanaheim in secret, they end up left to die. That's why I've always had that nightmare of being somewhere cold, where no one comes when I call for help. Because Laufey did that to me. Farbauti tried to stop him, but she died. Laufey pretended I died with her, and then he left me in some temple, hoping the Aesir army would finish me off when they took Utgard."

Thor's suspicious look had given way to one of dawning horror. He knew about that nightmare better than anyone else, even Mother. One of the first things he'd done in the role of older brother was climb into Loki's bed in the nursery and snuggle close to him on the nights when he woke up crying and terrified. Thor had whispered that nothing would hurt Loki while he was there, and Loki had believed him, even though Thor had only been a slightly bigger toddler himself. It had not been easy to move out of the nursery into his own chamber, as much as he pretended otherwise.

"Does that mean…"

"That I'm Laufey's son?" Loki nodded, watching Thor closely. He wanted to see it, the second the brotherly love drained out of him and disappeared forever. Maybe this was why he'd come here to tell Thor in person, because some perverse part of him couldn't believe that Thor would accept him and didn't want Mother or Father to have a chance to scold him into pretending otherwise. But all Thor did was sit there with the blankets over his legs, staring at him. Perhaps he only needed more encouragement. "So you see? I'm not your brother at all. I'm just one of the monsters you swore to hunt down and slay."

X

As Thor's eyes traced over the strange lines etched into Loki's skin, his mind wandered. He had often imagined what it would be like when he was grown and facing Frost Giants on a battlefield (for surely he would), but suddenly he couldn't picture it without seeing Loki leading the opposing army. And maybe that's exactly what would've happened if Father hadn't found him. But no...if Father hadn't found Loki, he'd just be dead.

Abruptly, he pushed the blankets off him and clambered over them towards Loki, then plopped back down in front of him, sitting cross-legged too. He looked into Loki's red eyes. He'd always thought that Frost Giant eyes were something demonic and frightening (not that he was afraid, of course), but that had only been in pictures. In real life, set in a face he knew as well as he knew his own, those eyes didn't look so strange. The color was rather striking, really. It stood out from the icy blue so much that it almost seemed to glow.

Thor knew what he needed to do, and it would probably be best to do it now, before any grown-ups could try to stop him. "I'm sure you managed to keep at least one dagger hidden from Mother," he said in a low voice, glancing briefly at the door. "May I borrow it?"

Loki's eyes narrowed, darting back and forth between Thor's. Then he held out a blue hand and conjured into it a small dagger. Thor took it and tested the blade with his thumb. He grimaced. Perhaps Mother hadn't bothered taking this one because of how dull it was. But it would have to do. Gritting his teeth, he dragged the blade clumsily across his right palm, swallowing a grunt of pain.

"What in all the nine realms are you doing, Thor!?" said Loki.

Thor looked up at him, surprised at the bewildered expression on his face. "What do you think I'm doing?" The cut stung rather badly, and he winced. He probably wouldn't be able to hold a sword even if Eir did let him out, but he didn't care. "If we're not brothers by blood, then I'm going to change that right now."

Loki's mouth fell open, and then tears came spilling down his cheeks. "You idiot! Haven't you paid any attention in our lessons on biology? Do you have any idea how many nerves and tendons and muscle fibers you might have just sliced through?"

"Oh, _now_ you care about that?" Thor scoffed. "What about two weeks ago?"

"I only stabbed you where it wouldn't do any real damage!"

Thor grinned, turned the dagger around, and offered it to Loki. Still blubbing, his cheeks turning more of a bluish-purple now, Loki copied Thor, slicing a neat cut across his right palm, hissing through his teeth as he did. At the sight of the navy blue blood that welled up from the wound, Loki let out a dismayed gasp and looked up at Thor. Well, if Loki thought the difference in the color of their blood would be enough to deter Thor from his plan, he was wrong, because Thor clasped Loki's hand at once.

He'd been fully prepared to take another burn when his skin made contact with Loki's, and he'd been especially worried that his blood might just freeze solid, but neither happened. Loki wasn't even as cold as the snow they'd played in on their visit to Alfheim five years ago. It was actually quite soothing against Thor's cut. He was sure he could feel some of that cold moving into his veins, which was just what he had wanted.

"There," he said. He reached up with his uninjured hand to clasp the back of Loki's neck. "Now I am a little bit Jotun and you are a little bit Aesir. You cannot say we aren't brothers after this. I will fight anyone who says we are not, even if that means I have to fight all of Asgard and Jotunheim and the Norns themselves."

With a sound somewhere between a whimper and a laugh, Loki threw his arms around Thor. "You might be a stupid oaf most of the time, Thor," he sniffled, "but you are the very best of brothers."

Thor beamed and hugged him back with all his might, ignoring the gooseflesh breaking out wherever Loki's cold skin made contact with his.

* * *

Pretty much the minute I posted the previous chapter, I was hit by the mental image of little Thor, chin jutting out defiantly, slicing his hand open to become Loki's blood brother. Even though part of me balks at how horrifically unsanitary and dangerous it is to slice your hand and mash it against someone else's bleeding wound, it's still just about the cutest way a biological child can claim an adoptive child as his sibling. The reason I didn't crank out this whole chapter immediately, though, is that it took a while to figure out exactly what Frigga would say to Loki, and what questions he would ask.

The obvious chapter title would have been "Blood Brothers," but I didn't want to give away what Thor was going to do before it happened.

I've done just about everything I wanted to with this fic already, but I'm not sure I can call it complete if Loki hasn't had any scenes with Odin, so there might be a final chapter or epilogue thing to take care of that and maybe summarize the family vacation to Vanaheim.


	4. Belonging

"I should warn you, your majesty, that Prince Loki has ordered me to ensure that he and his brother have privacy," said Eir dryly.

Frigga smiled. She was not surprised that Loki had decided to take matters into his own hands. Of the options she had given him, this was the one he was bound to choose. That was why the platter she had brought from the kitchens was laden with enough buttered rolls, baked fish, greens, and fruit and cream for two growing boys, not just one. "Then perhaps I will just leave this with them," she said.

Eir unlocked the door for her and she walked inside, where she found her sons leaping from cot to cot, laughing, and waving practice swords (which, she noticed, they held in their left hands). Eir stiffened indignantly, no doubt at the sight of her patient so flagrantly defying her orders to rest, but Frigga had to fight hard not to burst out laughing.

"Boys, I hope you can call a ceasefire in your campaign long enough to eat your midday meal."

They both spun around at the sound of her voice and bounded over to her. "Thank you, Eir," she said, and the healer departed, closing the door behind her. Frigga set the platter on Thor's bedside table, then handed each of them their plates. They dug in with enthusiasm, though at a raised eyebrow from her, they did make an effort to be tidy. Loki was more successful there. After a few moments, she realized the difficulty was that they held their forks in their left hands. She looked down at Thor's right hand, then Loki's. Both had strips of white cloth tied around them, which appeared to have come from one of the blankets.

"Dare I ask why you have crafted makeshift bandages for your hands while you are in a healing room?"

They both froze and stared at each other, then looked guiltily up at her. "We didn't think Eir would like it," said Thor.

"Like what?"

They squirmed some more, so she held up a hand expectantly. Thor placed his right hand in hers, and she carefully untied the bandage and moved it aside, revealing a jagged cut on his palm and navy and crimson stains on the cloth. She removed Loki's bandage and found a similar wound.

"Loki, I seem to recall asking you to give me _all_ of your daggers."

"I'm sorry, Mother," he said. He handed over a rather small, dull, unremarkable blade, and she slipped it into her dimensional pocket with the others.

"Is that the only one you kept?"

"Yes." The hint of sulkiness in his tone told her he wasn't lying.

"I will have to keep them all an extra week because you weren't honest with me. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Now, what happened to your hands?" she asked.

"It was my idea," said Thor.

"Oh?" said Frigga.

"We're brothers," said Thor, his round young face fierce. "I don't care if he's Jotun or how he got here, but now we have the same blood, so none of that matters."

Frigga pressed a hand to her mouth, unable to speak. She sat there like that for a long moment, tears welling up and streaking down her cheeks.

"Mother, are you well?" said Loki. "We didn't mean to make you sad."

"You haven't made me sad, darlings," said Frigga. She pulled both of them into a hug and kissed them one after the other. "This is not the way I would have chosen for you to show it, but one of the most wonderful things for a mother is to see that her children love each other."

"Of course we love each other," said Thor, scowling and attempting to wriggle free, but she briefly redoubled her grip on him, laughing, then released them. Loki remained sitting on her lap as he resumed eating his food, while Thor immediately sat back on the cot, seized another of the buttered rolls, and took a much larger bite than he could politely chew.

She watched both of them eating, her heart so full she thought it might burst. "Do you know that there is powerful magic in what you did?" she asked.

"There is?" said Loki.

"Oh yes. You made a pact to be brothers forever, and you sealed it with blood. There are accounts throughout history of pairs of brothers or companions who made similar bonds. It is some of the most powerful magic in all the nine realms." Their eyes went wide in amazement. She nodded and looked at them very seriously, taking the bandages and retying them around their hands. "It means that you will always be stronger when you are working together, but working against each other will weaken you. It will not be easy, which is why you must take care to listen, understand, and forgive each other so that you will not quarrel needlessly or grow apart."

"We will, Mother," said Thor, more solemn than she had ever seen him. Loki kept sneaking glances at him, relief and admiration in his eyes.

"These cuts will leave scars," she went on. "Whenever you are angry with each other, I want you to look at your scars and remember why you have them. Your brother should be your closest friend and your most important ally." She smiled. "At least until you find the one you're going to marry."

They both scowled and made noises of disgust, and she laughed and nudged Loki back over to the cot so she could get to her feet. "Well, I told your father I would hear his supplicants today to give him more time to negotiate with the dwarves. He thinks he will be able to join us for supper, and he asked me to give you his love in the meantime. I must leave you to your meal now, but I look forward to hearing about your lessons this evening. Bragi will expect you in the library in one hour, and then you will go to the conservatory to meet Vor, and finally to the training grounds with Tyr. I will send a raven to him to suggest he train you in off-hand fighting techniques for the next few days."

X

Buried in documents demanding his attention and irritable in the wake of his negotiations with Eitri and his brothers, Odin didn't realize he had missed supper until Frigga entered his study, accompanied by two servants. One carried a pitcher of mead, the other a platter of roast boar and potatoes. There was just enough space left on his desk to accommodate them.

"It appears I didn't save you much time after all," said Frigga, dismissing the servants with a nod and a smile.

"I'm sorry, my love," said Odin, setting down his pen. It truly had been a long day. "How are the boys?" He reached for the platter and began to eat, having only just realized how hungry he was.

"They are doing well," said Frigga, settling into the cushioned chair beside the desk and smoothing her skirts, "considering that Loki inadvertently shifted back into his true form today."

Odin choked on his first bite of boar.

"I have told him the truth about his heritage," she went on as he spluttered and gasped. "More importantly, he believes he has now discovered the reason you don't love him as well as Thor."

"What?" said Odin, still coughing. She had timed these revelations this way on purpose, he was sure of it. "Why would he believe such a thing in the first place?"

"He mentioned the amount of time you spend with each of them."

Odin frowned. "But they're nearly always together when I see them."

"Then perhaps the problem is not time but attention," said Frigga. "Loki is not so willing to shout for you and show off what he has learned as Thor, but that does not mean he does not crave your approval just as much. Though I am sure you have not withheld it deliberately, it has left Loki room to fear that he matters less to you because of what he is."

"What could have made him shift back?" said Odin. "He's never done so before. I would have thought that only strong exposure to Jotun magic—" He broke off at the sight of Frigga's raised eyebrow. "I see. It was the Casket, wasn't it?"

"It seems he and Thor crept out of their beds sometime in the night, evaded detection all the way down to the Vault, and got past the guards."

Fear and anger rose up in Odin. "What were they thinking?" he said loudly. "Most of those relics could have killed them, or worse! I'll have those guards cleaning the lavatories in the barracks for a decade for letting them anywhere near it. And as to Thor and Loki—"

"I think they have already faced consequence enough," Frigga cut smoothly across him, putting a hand on his shoulder to keep him from rising from his chair. "When Loki touched the Casket, it changed him back. Thor then tried to grab his arm and was badly frostbitten. Because they told no one, it became infected overnight. I found Thor unresponsive and Loki distraught and terrified over it. Eir has tended to Thor and he is perfectly well now, but I do not think they will soon forget this lesson."

Odin let out a long sigh and massaged his temples with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. "I never wanted this."

"No," said Frigga. " _You_ wanted to keep them happily ignorant for as long as possible, but there should be no secrets in a family. I helped Loki return to his Aesir form and explained everything to him. It is for the best."

"And what of Thor?" Odin remembered Thor's enthusiasm at the idea of hunting down and slaughtering Frost Giants and winced. He had certainly not taken the right message from Odin's account of the war.

"Loki told him himself," said Frigga, "sometime this morning." Her fond smile melted Odin's worries. "I found them playing together in the healing room. The truth seems to have only brought them closer together. Which means there is only one member of Loki's family who has not reassured him of his place within it." She fixed him with an imperious gaze.

X

Loki leaned his elbows against the balcony railing outside his chambers, looking out over Asgard. The view was spectacular as always, and he knew from his cosmic navigation lessons that the dim blue speck directly ahead in the velvety black sky was Jotunheim. He'd never had such a hard time attending to his studies as he had that afternoon in his lessons with Bragi and Vor. Thor actually answered more of their questions than he did, which was unprecedented—not that he was always correct. For Thor, all seemed to have gone back to normal already. He had claimed Loki as his brother in blood, and in his straightforward mind that was all it took to settle the matter.

If only it could be so for him. While he had been distracted and struggled to concentrate in the more scholarly lessons, training with Tyr was the opposite. He had poured all the confusion, fear, and frustration he felt into his attacks, working himself into a blind fury before he even knew what was happening. The result was that Fandral had left the practice grounds with quite a few bruises and a distinctly sulky air. The two boys were normally fairly evenly matched—at least in bouts where Loki was barred from wielding seidr—and he was near enough to ambidextrous that being confined to using his left hand had barely slowed him down.

He only wished he knew where all that rage had come from. At supper (which Father had missed, again), Thor had boasted to Mother of how well Loki had fought, and Loki pretended to revel in the praise. He wasn't sure how convincing it had been. He'd seen Frigga glancing at his plate several times as he picked listlessly at his food.

He heard the door open behind him but didn't look around. It was probably Thor, or maybe his mother wanted to make sure he was still doing well after all the revelations the day had brought.

"Your mother tells me you have had a very interesting day."

Loki jumped and looked to his right. His visitor was not Frigga or Thor, but Odin. Heat rising in his cheeks, he looked back out at the stars. "Is that... _all_ she told you?"

"No."

There was a long, painful silence. Loki did not want to be the first to break it, but eventually he couldn't help himself. "Why did you take me?" he burst out, fingers clenching around his arms. "You'd been fighting the Frost Giants for decades, and all of Asgard hates them. Why did you want to keep one alive, let alone adopt him?"

"All of Asgard does not hate the Frost Giants," said Odin. At this, Loki shot him a reproachful look. Did he think he was stupid?

"What they hate," said Odin, unperturbed by Loki's accusing expression, "is a false image they have constructed through millennia of poor relations culminating in a decades-long war. Very few truly know them well enough to hate them. If they did, I think they would find they have too much in common for it. The Aesir are not perfect—far from it, and there is much to admire and respect about the Jotnar."

Loki frowned.

"As to my bringing you home, I had many reasons."

"What were they?" said Loki, cautiously standing up straight and facing him. At the sight of the familiar eyepatch, he realized with a squirming sensation in his stomach that it was his own birth father who had gouged out Odin's eye.

"Firstly," said Odin, "you were an innocent child; the war was not your doing." He looked out over Asgard. "I thought of all the children who likely had lost their lives over the course of the war because no one was left to care for them. Saving just one wouldn't do anything to help the others, but it was a good way to mark the dawn of a new era for Asgard and Jotunheim." He glanced down at Loki, eye crinkling. "And if the child of my enemy could look up at me and smile, perhaps all hope for true peace was not lost."

"What were the other reasons?" said Loki.

"I walked into that temple to get a moment of quiet after such a long and bloody battle...a long war. A long life of little but war, it seemed. It weighed so heavily upon me, and even though Asgard had triumphed and I had my wife and son waiting for me at home, I had never felt so isolated. The very last thing I expected was to find a kindred spirit waiting for me inside."

"Mother said we have similar temperaments," said Loki.

"As in all things, your mother is right. I, like you, was the smallest of my father's three sons, the youngest, and the one most inclined towards seidr. To be able to transform so young is a gift few are blessed with, whether Aesir or Jotun.

"There were also, of course, strategic advantages in keeping a child of Jotunheim. I will not pretend I did not think of that. Someone like you would have value in future alliances and diplomacy that no Aesir child could achieve, simply by being Jotun. A more ruthless king, someone like my father, might have seen the abandoned son of Laufey not as a helpless infant but as an opportunity to destabilize his enemy's reign and insert a puppet king in his place. Perhaps that would have been the most efficient way to bring Jotunheim to heel longterm, but I did not want to purchase peace with that kind of currency.

"The simplest reason I took you, perhaps, is that you needed me. I'm not sure when it occurred to me that I was thinking as a father, not a king, but by the time I placed you in Frigga's arms, the idea of sending you to be raised by some other Aesir family had become intolerable to me."

"Have you…," Loki began hesitantly, fidgeting with the bandage on his hand. "Have you ever regretted—?"

"Not for a single moment," said Odin, turning to fix him with his gaze again.

Loki looked down at his feet. "Not even when I stabbed Thor?"

Odin chuckled. "You think my brothers and I did not do that and worse to each other when we were boys? I certainly would prefer you had _not_ stabbed Thor, but I did not name you Odinson, enchant false memories of Frigga's second pregnancy into my people's minds, and swear Heimdall and Lady Eir to secrecy over Gungnir on a mere whim."

Loki didn't know whether to smile or weep, so he looked out at at the stars again, ignoring the ache in his throat. His eyes found Jotunheim again. "I hate him."

"Who?"

"Laufey." His hands were clenched around his arms again, so tightly it hurt. "Why didn't he want me? Why did he have to write that stupid law?" He gritted his teeth against the threat of more tears. He would _not_ cry for Laufey.

"I'm afraid I don't know, my boy. If Laufey had been the kind of king to write just laws and love his children as they deserved, there might never have been a war. I hope you will not allow his actions to keep hurting you. He cast you aside without a thought for what you could bring to his household and his realm, but every day you have lived, learned, grown, and been a part of this family has been your triumph against his cruelty."

"And yet he is still king of Jotunheim, and he thinks he succeeded in getting rid of me," said Loki bitterly.

Odin sighed. "When I spoke to you and Thor yesterday, I told you that one of you would have to defend the peace between Asgard and Jotunheim. I was thinking particularly of you, Loki."

Loki turned to frown at his father. "You don't mean to make an ally of Laufey, do you?"

"Not Laufey. Laufey's reign will end one day, as surely as my own will. I have reason to believe Helblindi and Byleistr—your brothers by birth—will be far more fair-minded than their father. The peace I hope to build would be for them and their people, and you, my son, could be the key to helping our two peoples understand each other at last."

Loki stared up at Odin, eyes wide. He could almost feel the weight of responsibility settling around his shoulders, and he wondered if this was anything like what Thor had felt the first time he realized what it meant to be Crown Prince. The prospect was a terrifying one—and yet, in a way, it was a relief to know what was expected of him. The thought that Odin believed he could do it sparked a warm glow of pride in his chest. "How would I do that, Father?"

"Not easily, and not for several more centuries, I hope, so do not feel as though this is something you must solve in a week. But perhaps we can begin with a thought experiment. One of the obstacles in your path will be Jotunheim's attitude towards undersized Jotuns. Farbauti did not care about your size, but thanks to Laufey's poisonous lies, most Jotnar will not be able to see past it. In order to gain their trust, you will first have to persuade them to reject their king's ideas about their smaller kin. How might you go about it?"

Loki swallowed. "Must they know I am Jotun? Can I not simply approach them as a prince of Asgard? An ambassador?"

"It is possible that there is a way to succeed without revealing your true lineage to them, but you would then forfeit any opportunity to help those whom Laufey's law has harmed and spare those it will harm in the future. Why should the Jotun population at large care that an Aesir prince disapproves of one of their beliefs?"

Loki's frown deepened as he thought hard. He certainly did not want that law to remain unchallenged. After a moment, he said, "I would...need to learn exactly what the law and the religious texts say about small babies, as well as how gladly the people accept it. It would also be good to learn what it was like before Laufey made the law, and why he did it, though I suppose that would be much harder to ascertain. Perhaps I could start by visiting the cities on Alfheim and Vanaheim where the ones who escaped Jotunheim have made their homes. If they have any contact with their birth families, that would tell me a great deal about what the main population thinks. They might even want to help."

"Very good, yes. It will be crucial to make use of every possible resource. What else?"

"Well...Mother said that the law paints small Jotnar as cursed and dangerous. If...if a small Jotun were to do something so big and so obviously good for Jotunheim that Laufey's lies were ruined, then he would have to yield or risk losing his people's support."

"Something big, hmm?" said Odin, scratching his beard. "I agree, but what could be big enough to force Laufey's hand in such a way? He is one of the most stubborn beings I have ever met."

Loki opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out. For a glorious moment, he felt like he'd been on the verge of something brilliant, but now it was like all the wind had gone out of his sails. He stared hopelessly at that dim blue speck of light not far above the horizon. It was the exact same wintry blue as the Casket.

He straightened up. "The Casket!" he exclaimed. "It is the heart of Jotunheim. I could feel that when I touched it, and you said they will never be able to restore their realm to its former glory without it." The words had barely passed his lips when the excitement drained out of him. What he was suggesting sounded an awful lot like he was taking Jotunheim's side over Asgard's. In spite of all that Frigga, Thor, and now Odin had said and done to reassure him that he belonged in their family, he was terrified that he might have ruined everything with his treasonous ideas. His father's large, warm hand settled on his shoulder and pulled him closer to his side, and yet again he had to fight back the urge to cry.

"The Casket was never meant to be used as a weapon," said Odin. His tone was far gentler than Loki had expected. "It was never meant to leave Jotunheim at all. Laufey betrayed his own realm when he took it to Midgard with the intent to conquer and destroy. He treated the greatest power within his grasp with the same contempt he offered his own newborn child, and for that he deserved to keep neither. It would serve him well to watch that very child use the Casket do what he has failed to do for his people."

"Then...you think I should?" said Loki, astonished.

"Loki, I think it might very well be the best way forward. Perhaps the only way forward. In my foolishness, I almost made it impossible because I believed it was more important to protect you from the truth than to prepare you."

Loki's relief was so intense that his bones seemed to have turned temporarily to liquid. He sagged against Odin's side, his next few breaths coming in shudders. The hand on his shoulder squeezed a little.

"Accomplishing this will be far more difficult than discussing it," said Odin. "And it is only half of the equation. Another obstacle is public sentiment on Asgard, and that must be addressed first. The reasons I hid your heritage from my own subjects still hold. Before you can approach Jotunheim, the people of Asgard will need to want peace. They will need to see more than a defeated enemy and the faceless figures of their frightening tales when they look upon the Jotnar. I will appreciate your suggestions on how to bring about these changes. Your mother and brother can certainly help as well, and I'm sure they will want to, but I would like it to be chiefly our project. Perhaps we could discuss such matters and anything else on your mind over a weekly game of hnefatafl? If my council complains, I will simply have to tell them that my son's claim on my time is higher than theirs."

"I would like that very much, Father," said Loki, and miraculously his voice did not tremble as he said it.

Odin chuckled. "Come here," he said, and he pulled Loki into an enveloping hug. Wrapped in his father's arms, with the prospect of all they would do together to achieve peace stretching out on the path ahead of him, he could allow himself to hope that all might be well.

* * *

While I do think Frigga has a good point about Loki and Odin having a harder time being close because they're both more reserved in temperament, I also think that's only part of it. In canon, the only purpose Loki seems to have on Asgard is to be the spare (and when he learns he's a Frost Giant, he thinks even that is gone). I think the best way Odin could show Loki that he loves him as a son would be to actually entrust him with a major responsibility—one that he is uniquely qualified for. And that line "one of you will have to defend that peace" in canon did strike me as a hint in that direction, as well as "I thought we could unite our kingdoms one day. Bring about an alliance, bring about permanent peace through you. But those plans no longer matter."

So because Loki finds out the truth as a kid in this AU, he'll get to grow up knowing what his purpose is, no barrier of lies between him and his parents, and a project to share with his dad that will last centuries. He'll have something constructive to focus his brilliant mind on. He'll probably still cause a fair amount of mischief, but it would be lighthearted rather than borne of frustration. And whether or not there is actual magic in the "blood bond" Thor and Loki made, I think it's a nudge in the right direction for Thor, so that he wouldn't be so inclined to brush aside Loki's discontentment or leave him behind in favor of more outgoing friends. Being closer to Loki would also benefit Thor. I'm not sure he'd ever get to a point where he's arrogant, thoughtless, and bloodthirsty enough to get himself banished.

(One Thor WIP down, several to go! Yay!)


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